In the 1880s, young Fanny McCoy witnesses the growth of a terrible and violent feud between her Kentucky family and the West Virginia Hatfields, complicated by her older sister Roseanna's romance with a Hatfield.

Summary

Fanny McCoy has lived in fear and anger ever since that day in 1878 when a dispute with the Hatfields over the ownership of a few pigs set her family on a path of hatred and revenge. From that day forward, along the ragged ridges of the West Virginia-Kentucky line, the Hatfields and the McCoys have operated not within the law but within mountain codes of their own making. In 1882, when Fanny's sister Roseanna runs off with young Johnse Hatfield, the hatred between the two clans explodes. As the killings, abductions, raids, and heartbreak escalate bitterly and senselessly, Fanny, the sole voice of reason, realizes that she is powerless to stop the fighting and must learn to rise above the petty natures of her family and neighbors to find her own way out of the hatred.

Author Notes

Young adult author Ann Rinaldi was born in New York City on August 27, 1934. After high school, she became a secretary in the business world. She got married in 1960 and stopped working, but after having two children she decided to try writing. In 1969, she wrote a weekly column in the Somerset Messenger Gazette and in 1970 she wrote two columns a week for the Trentonian, which eventually led to her writing features and soft new stories. She published her first novel Term Paper in 1979, but was ultimately drawn to writing historical fiction when her son became involved in reenactments while he was in high school. Her first historical fiction novel was Time Enough for Drums. She also writes for the Dear America series. She currently lives in Somerville, New Jersey with her husband.

Booklist Review

Gr. 6^-10. Young Fanny McCoy lives in the shadow of violence. Her late-1800s West Virginia^-Kentucky community is the hotbed of the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud that has inflamed her family with fear and suspicion and set off killing rampages. When Fanny's older sister, Ro, elopes with Johnse Hatfield, the stage is set for escalating hatred and tragic results. The roots of the vitriolic conflict stem from the Civil War days, with insult upon injury following until the why of the conflict no longer seems to matter. "It's just in the McCoy blood to make right a wrong done to you and yourn," Tolbert McCoy muses to Fanny, and "making right" virtually consumes the family in the end. Strong characterizations fill the pages, as does a brooding sense of tragedy that hangs over the community, symbolized by the coffin quilt that Ro obsessively works on and the "Yeller Thing" animal vision that appears to Fanny every time evil is about to descend. Yet Fanny has a perspective and freshness that make her strongly appealing and rescue the book from sheer bleakness. Rinaldi remains a popular writer of young-adult historical fiction, and this novel beautifully evokes a time, a place, and one of the more peculiar sagas in American history. A followup note provides background about the feud. --Anne O'Malley

Publisher's Weekly Review

Fanny McCoy, the protagonist and narrator of Rinaldi's (A Break with Charity; An Acquaintance with Darkness) tautly plotted historical novel about the infamous feuding families effectively portrays the clans' divided loyalties and cycle of violence. This colorful novel, an addition to the Great Episodes series, begins in 1889, when Fanny is 16, at a hanging, and flashes back to 1880 to describe the evolution of the quarrel Fanny claims would never have started "if not for my sister Roseanna. And I can say this, because I loved her best of all." Roseanna McCoy, "so purty that just being next to her is better than a piece of rock candy," ran off with Johnse Hatfield and ignited the tinder box of residual hatred still smoldering from "The War Amongst Us" (the Civil War). As Roseanna stitches the title quilt, she morbidly records the interwoven fates of the two families, and Fanny, watching her, gradually realizes that her sister courted destruction and "dragged so many of us with her." Through homespun language, folk remedies, superstition and a vivid picture of a vengeful religion (e.g., Mama McCoy constantly shifts the pebbles of those in her prayers between the saved and damned piles), Rinaldi skillfully paints the code of honor of Kentucky and West Virginia mountain families. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Gr 6-9-Based on the legendary feud between the West Virginia Hatfields and the Kentucky McCoys and narrated by the youngest McCoy, Fanny, this story recounts the escalating bitter feelings and violence between the families. Their feud, simmering since the 1870s, originated in a dispute over a hog, although changing social and economic factors exacerbated animosities. Here, the catalyst that sparks the greatest violence is Roseanna McCoy's liaison with handsome, faithless Johnse Hatfield. The unwed couple lives together for several months until Roseanna returns to her family. An unfinished coffin quilt, a fabric record of Hatfield family births and deaths, and her unborn baby are her only legacy of her stay. Although Rinaldi has kept close to the actual sequence of events of the feud, she has introduced elements of her own creation in her endeavor to explain the "why" of the story. Her interpretation through Fanny that Roseanna "sought destruction of herself. And she'd dragged so many of us with her" is difficult to accept. In addition, it is hard to understand why, in a story that is replete with documented historical violence, the author added gratuitous cruelty in portraying elder sister Alifair's relationship with Fanny as abusive. This violence is unnecessary for either character or plot development, and with such a genuinely brutal story, it seems over the top to include it.-Patricia B. McGee, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.